The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850-1960

Medical care in nineteenth-century China was spectacularly pluralistic: herbalists, shamans, bone-setters, midwives, priests, and a few medical missionaries from the West all competed for patients. This book examines the dichotomy between "Western" and "Chinese" medicine, showing how it has been greatly exaggerated. As missionaries went to lengths to make their medicine more acceptable to Chinese patients, modernizers of Chinese medicine worked to become more "scientific" by eradicating superstition and creating modern institutions. Andrews challenges the supposed superiority of Western medicine in China while showing how "traditional" Chinese medicine was deliberately created in the image of a modern scientific practice.

About the author (2015)

Bridie Andrews is an associate professor of history at Bentley University and teaches history of medicine at the New England School of Acupuncture in Massachusetts. She has coedited two books, Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge and Medicine and Identity in the Colonies.